How to Become a Digital Influencer: 10 Best Ways

How do you go about becoming that person whose every word is listened to? How do you build trust so that you become an influencer? Digital influencers have not been around that long. However, there’s already a science behind influencer marketing. It’s not easy, but there is a path.

Photo by electrictuesday

Focus on Your Special Interest

Although it seems counter-intuitive, becoming more specialized makes you more likely to becoming an influencer. Pay attention to the small things.

“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”

~ Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

There is already talk of a skills gap in social media, due to the fast proliferation of new platforms, and the breakneck speed of digital change. With so much going on, developing a special interest doesn’t have to be difficult.

Follow Other Influencers

Read their books, read their blogs, and study them. Follow them on social media, and check in with them. Comment on their blog posts. Start conversations. Show up at their events. In my arena, that might be Mari Smith, or Gary Vanderchuk.

Find Your Social Media Voice

Write and rewrite your statements until they ring true to you. If you’ve ever written a journal, writing posts can be somewhat similar. Reading a post or tweet out loud can also help make it sound natural, and more like your voice.

Create Content

If you’ve followed some influencers, make yourself distinct from them. How does your opinion differ from theirs? There may be some areas where you have a strong opinion. Images and original artwork or video are becoming more and more important, so take advantage of images as well. Here’s an article about Secrets to Great Content You Forgot You Knew. It includes some tips about how to avoid procrastination.

Photo by volantra

Engage, Engage, Engage

Share others’ posts, and most of all talk to people online and offline. Engagement is probably the most important of the ten steps here. Why should you care about engagement? Because for your brand, you can speak to one possible client or many, you can drive people to a website to buy products, all while you work on your branding. Building relationships takes time; constant and steady engagement is the path to those relationships.

Sprout Social has a wonderful article about social media engagement: What is Social Media Engagement and Why Should I Care?

Photo by UT Connewitz

Be Useful

Helping others is an excellent way to build influence. Being a resource is one of the fastest ways to being influential. Find what people need and then provide it. Whether that’s giving someone a helping hand or solving a problem, being useful is a shortcut to influence success.

Overcome Failure

Get up every time you fall down. Rinse and repeat every day. The Positivity Blog has a great little article about failure: How to Overcome Failure: 9 Powerful Habits. As Henrick Edberg says, try to learn something from the failure, even if it’s just one simple thing.

Think Long Term

Nothing is going to happen overnight, although you can speed up the process. Unless you’re a celebrity, nobody gets a free pass. But all the organic reach, the followers and added business are worth it. Social media is more of a tortoise than a hare.

Photo by o. denise

Work Hard and Be Creative

Get the work done, definitely. But also be creative in how you get it done. For instance, you can recycle content, especially on Twitter. Save yourself from redoing your work. Even Guy Kawasaki reuses content! Nobody is going to read every single one of your tweets, so repeating them can be part of your strategy.

Photo by Aidan Jones

Be Approachable

Be like a pair of old shoes: comfortable and a little worn around the edges. I think Dale Carnegie said something like that. My friend, Bridget Willard, wrote a great post about being friendly, which you can be even if you’re shy. It’s in her Keys to Being Social: Be Friendly.

Do You Want to Be More Influential?

What steps are you taking to be more influential? I’m sure there are many missing here. Leave me a comment, and thanks!

Transform Your Brilliant Content

Ten Ways to Recycle Content

Ever had a great idea that you weren’t sure how to share without making all your friends crazy? Sure you have! You have one of those right now…sitting in your back pocket. That idea for a Portable Solar Dog Grooming Truck, for instance, needs to be seen. Or that website for cats who take selfies (you even bought the CatsWhoTakeSelfies.com domain and a GoPro!) just begs to be released unto the world. But how?

Blog

Your website is the basis of all great ideas. This is where the ideas live. Use your blog to expand your brilliant idea, adding pictures, drawings, and video, if possible (more about video below). Once you’ve written about your idea, you can begin to spin it into other formats. This is where the fun begins!

Twitter

Yes, you’ll need to tweet about your great idea. Take different snippets, add different pictures, and voila! A blogpost of a few hundred words can become many tweets. Don’t forget to pin your newest post to the top of your Twitter feed, along with an image. Twitter has become more and more image-centric, so take advantage.

Speaking of images, you can pin your blog post to your blog board (here’s my blog board, by the way). Include search terms so that people looking for your topic can find it. Anything with cats and selfies, or cute, wet dogs has to be on Pinterest. Unless it already is!

Facebook

Maybe only 3 or 4 people will see it on Facebook unless you promote it, but still. You have to put it there. And the more you post and interact on Facebook, the better the chances that your content will be found.

Create a more scholarly headline to get people to click on that link. I like this example of good LinkedIn headlines, from LinkedIn Makeover.

YouTube

Why not create a video of your blog post and put it up on YouTube? YouTube is absolutely wonderful, especially if you have a how-to video that needs to be seen.

Instagram

Pictures of cute dogs and cats! Who could resist? Hashtag it like crazy. That’s how people find you on Instagram, and everyone seems to hashtag everything shamelessly.

Solid Gold

When your content gets a little old, you can bring it back to life. You can rewrite an older blog piece by changing about one-third of it and adding pictures. If you’ve been blogging for a year or two, this is a good way to reuse content.

Create an eBook

Once you have a few posts, you can bundle a few and create an eBook. For instance, you could take your solar idea and bundle that with some other posts you’ve written for a book about portable solar.

Make a Slideshare

If you’re good with images, you could make a PowerPoint that you share with your friends on social media. This could go on all channels, and in this new format, many people might relate to it more. Or you could find someone who could do it for you.

Podcast

Many people are audible learners, and prefer learning by listening. Or they’d love to listen to you speak your idea. You can have someone transcribe your Hangout on Air or blog post and then use the podcasts for still another purpose.

How Do You Recycle Content?

Each time you switch mediums you’ll come up with some new ideas, which will appeal to a different audience. Some people love video, some like to listen, and some want to scroll quickly through images. What’s your favorite way to recycle?